Line #15 Headscratchers/Popeye


1	!!Competing for Olive
2	What the Hell does Popeye (and Bluto as well) see in Olive Oyl?
3	* From what I can tell, she's a skinny chick.
4	** That's the joke.
5	** At the time period, skinny people were generally considered the more attractive kind of people, weren't they? Also, Olive is the good kind of cute--not the tasteless, sappy cute you see in a Disney cartoon--she's obviously ugly, but goes about her business like a cutie--something that Famous Studios missed the point of and just made her generic cute. True cuteness has a level of ignorance to it. Also, Popeye ain't exactly a beauty himself.
6	** Olive's body has changed shape over the years; in some of the Famous cartoons she's actually rather glamorous.
7	** Olive was never intendend to be attractive in any way. She's ugly, fickle, flighty, and genrally unpleasant. She's markedly easier to take in the comic strip, which didn't rely on her frequent dalliance with Bluto (they don't, in fact, contain Bluto much at all)to set up the generic "Popeye eats spinach and beats the snot out of Bluto" plot. As the second troper suggests, her unattractiveness and unpleasantness is intended to be a joke, given how devoted Popeye is to her (though to be fair, he ain't much of a prize himself).
8	*** In the original comic strip, Olive was just very young, rather vain (a [[TheRoaringTwenties flapper type]]), and often snarky. But she'd been around for ten or twelve years before Popeye ever appeared.
9	** It's a very common stereotype attached to sailors, that after months in the high seas they will find anything attractive.
10	!!Olive's choice in men
11	* What does Olive see in THEM?
12	** Oh come on now. Popeye is ''hot.''
13	** In the movie at least, Olive never actually liked Bluto and only got engaged to him because it protected her family from the tax collector. She liked Popeye because he was a NiceGuy who was adorably devoted to Swee'Pea.
14	** The shorts, like most other theatrical cartoons, have no real canon and just have a set cast of characters that can be used to fill different roles, which is why Olive Oyle is so inconsistent in her attraction to Popeye and/or Bluto, similar to Minnie in the old Mickie Mouse shorts. Canonically speaking, she has no attraction to Bluto, seeing him as a JerkAss bully (which he is), and loves Popeye due to his bravery and devotion.
15	!!Dude, just eat the spinach!
16	* Why couldn't Popeye just eat the spinach outright instead of waiting for "the right moment"?
17	** Well, Popeye's favorite food is spinach, so he probably eats it all the time; in any given cartoon he probably had spinach for breakfast and something with spinach in it for lunch; if you watch the cartoons or read the comics you'll see that he is already very strong even ''before'' he boosts up on spinach. It's just that he has a can ready for when he needs an extra energy boost.
18	*** Also, it's limited how many cans of spinach he can carry on his person at any given time -- one or two seems to be the limit. (Sometimes he's shown to carry more, but those instances are clearly just done for [[RuleOfFunny the sake of a gag.]]) Hence he has to save those extra energy boosts for when he ''really'' needs them.
19	*** In the comics (of recent vintage, anyway), Popeye breaking out the spinach is treated as a LetsGetDangerous moment. Usually, he can handle the threat of the day without it. In the cartoons, note that Popeye is usually winning whatever contest he's into until the bad guy (not always Bluto) pulls a dirty trick, and Popeye pulls the spinach to even the odds.
20	*** Pretty much. Popeye usually doesn't need the Spinach, he is superhumanly strong as he is.
21	!!!If the wrong one ate the spinach
22	* What happens if Popeye's opponent also eats spinach? Does a YinYangClash occur?
23	** The opponent would just get stronger, and sort of negate the point of Popeye eating the spinach. Popeye's fed Bluto spinach during the occasional EnemyMine episode and it worked the same for him.
24	!!Again, more on Olive's choice in men
25	* Many times Bluto kidnap, assault, and possibly try to rape Olive, and Popeye always arrive to save the day. Why does she become interested in Bluto in later episodes?
26	** Watsonian interpretation: AllGirlsWantBadBoys, or she does it to [[SecretTestOfCharacter test Popeye's devotion to her]]. The actual reason is that, like how Miyamoto said to compare Mario to Popeye, the Popeye crew is like a theatre troupe; they play their roles within different, [[NegativeContinuity unconnected]] stories, so one day Popeye and Bluto are next door neighbors, the next they are rival pirate captains. They all perform for us to love them.
27	** Because in Popeye, StatusQuoIsGod.
28	!!Bluto, pick on someone else
29	* Why does Bluto keep on fighting Popeye? Shouldn't he have gotten the memo the third or so time he popped a can of spinach?
30	----
31	* Also, why the hell can't Bluto just go buy his own can of spinach?
32	** Bluto is seen to despise spinach, so much so that he won't even eat it if it means beating Popeye. He may even consider eating it to even the odds the same as admitting defeat.
33	!!UnexplainedAccent?
34	* What is Popeye's accent and speech pattern supposed to be? Especially his grammar in the comics.
35	** My best guess is brain-damaged Irish. Considering Popeye's a fighter at heart, he's probably had his noggin rattled a time or two.

Context Headscratchers / Popeye